Conventional digital printers and copiers allow transmitting print jobs from a client PC over a network or other communication connections to such printer or copier. (In the following, the term “printer” shall be used for digital printers and digital copiers.) Professional printers allow the user selecting a multitude of settings, e.g. input tray, paper size, or finishing options. This selection is performed in a printer driver which is called when the user tries to submit a print job from an application on the client PC. Settings like the input tray can be selected for the whole print job or individually for each page. When the printer driver sends the print job to the printer, the data in the print job comprise also the instructions corresponding to the settings selected by the user.
The printer driver can be used, e.g., to insert, during printing, tab sheets between the normal pages of a print job. A tab sheet consists of a rectangular body and a protruding tab located at a specific, selectable position at one edge of the main body (see FIG. 1). A set of tab sheets consists of tab sheets whose tabs are located at the same edge of the main body, but at different locations. By this ordering of tabs, a print document can be structured by the inserted tab sheets. FIG. 1 shows a pile of paper with inserted tab sheets. Each tab sheet has a tab. The tabs are located at the edge of the tab sheet at different locations for easy identification. The positions of the tabs at the edge of the tab sheet correspond to their order in the pile of paper and thereby provide a structure to the pile of paper.
Tab sheets can be inserted additionally to the normal pages of the printed document, or instead of the normal pages of the printed document. In the first case, the tab sheet is called a blank tab sheet (also regular tab sheet, see FIG. 2), in the second case, the tab sheet is called a printed tab sheet (also bleed tab sheet, see FIG. 3). FIG. 2 shows a blank tab sheet. The main body of the blank tab sheet has no content. Only the tab is printed with text. FIG. 3 shows a printed tab sheet. On a printed tab sheet, the main body of the tab sheet is printed with the text or other content of the corresponding document page, whereas the tab is printed with the corresponding tab text.
If the print job requires more tab sheets than the sheets contained in one set of tab sheets (e.g. the job requires 10 tab sheets, but the set contains only 5), multiple sets of tab sheets can be used for such a print job. FIG. 4 shows the usage of multiple sets of tab sheets. If the number of required tab sheets exceeds the number of tab sheets in a set, a new set of tab sheets is inserted after the last sheet, starting again with the first sheet.
Such solutions are already in use, e.g. in printers of Konica Minolta Corp. or Xerox Corp.
Newer printers allow using in a single print job different kinds of tab sheets, e.g. with wide and small tabs, with different paper colors, or with different number of tabs per set of tab sheets. The different kinds of tab sheets can be used to express different tab levels and thereby a hierarchical structure within the print job. In order to avoid erroneous input, users expect that this structure, the order of the tab sheets, and their properties can be easily recognized and easily manipulated throughout the print system including the printer driver.
US patent application 2008/0030784 describes a printer driver with a user interface which allows a user inserting tab sheets from two different levels into a print job.
US patent application 2008/0175636 describes a printer driver by which conditions for the first and the second level of tab sheets can be determined. In both solutions, the user interface provides input fields, but no graphical visualization of the structure of the print job resulting from the user input, showing the relation between the document pages and the tab sheets in an overview. Therefore both solutions have a potential for user errors.
US patent application US 2002/0131075 A1 supports the permanent management of information about tab sheets in documents. For this purpose, markers are written into the document which are read back later. I.e. the document is used as a permanent storage for information about tab sheets. This method cannot be applied in a printer driver because of its interface with the operating system. Because of this interface, documents are always newly created in the actual printing task and the documents created this way contain no structure except the sequence of pages.
The patent application further describes different usages of tab sheets (regular tabs and bleed tabs). These correspond to blank tab sheets and printed tab sheets, i.e. different ways to print on a tab sheet. They are not directly related to physically different types of tab sheets. Further, these usages are not (or much less than physically different kinds) suited to express different levels of tab sheets and thereby a hierarchical structure. The patent application shows also the display of a document hierarchy. However, this display is related to the hierarchy of different documents, not the hierarchy of tab sheets. For tab sheets, only a textual, not a hierarchically structured display of their properties is provided.
The European patent application EP 1 291 814 A2 supports the management of media (paper type and paper size) in a media catalogue. This includes determination of a subset of the media catalogue to ease the media selection. Tab sheets are supported as media types, however, there is no specific support for showing the hierarchy, kind, or order of tab sheets.
The patent application WO 2004/013748 A2 describes a method for applying finishing commands to ranges and subranges within a print file, where an accompanying control file defines a level structure corresponding to the ranges and subranges in the print file. These informations can be generated e.g. from a database, in parallel to the creation of the print job. This solution is not applicable within a printer driver, because it requires that besides the print file there is structural information about this file (the ranges and subranges). However, due to the interface of the printer driver with the operating system, such information is not accessible within a printer driver.
The known solutions have the disadvantage that a hierarchical structure corresponding to the different levels of tab sheets either cannot be represented at all, or requires the document structure which however, is not available in a printer driver due to its interface with the operating system.
Further the known solutions have the disadvantage that they cannot implement all possible variants of inserting tab sheets. E.g. it is not possible to insert multiple tab sheets (of one level) directly before or directly after a normal sheet of the print job. Further the solutions do not allow inserting tab sheets both before and after a document page in a print job. Further the solutions are error prone due to the lacking overview in their user interface.